He came. He saw. He conquered–in spite of himself.
Napoleon may look like a classic historical epic from the Fifties, but director Ridley Scott–who has made several pictures in this category, is not interested in treating his subject with admiration or even respect. Instead, his movie mocks Napoleon from beginning to end, resulting in the cinematic equivalent of a rude gesture delivered for over two hours.
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We’ve all met a person like Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti) in our lives, perhaps more than one if we’re particularly unfortunate. He’s a stickler for the rules, insisting that whatever is to be done must be in accordance with the policy manual. Any deviation from the established order must be penalized. If your Paul Hunham probably wasn’t a teacher, he probably was a colleague at work, a relative or a friend of a friend. You do your best to tolerate people like this as best you can until you are free of them, because there’s no way around them. Their sole purpose is to make your life miserable by enforcing the rules and then seeing you are called out for failing to do so. (Full disclosure: I’ve been a taskmaster from time to time.)
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Priscilla opens with a signature Sofia Coppola montage. Threaded with the credits are images of personal items that belong to the eponymous character, as well as close-ups of her applying eyeliner and false eyelashes. As it turns out, the special event in question is not just a very consequential one in Priscilla Presley’s life, but also one of the few instances where she will have the attention of the media. When you’re married to The King of Rock & Roll, you have to make the most of what few opportunities have to make a good impression. The irony of the event and Pricilla’s preparation for it speaks volumes about how dramatically her life had changed in the eight years since she met Elvis.
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There’s a key moment in The Marsh King’s Daughter, when Jacob (Ben Mendelssohn) hands his daughter Helena (Brooklynn Prince) a rifle and tells her to shoot a female wolf. She takes aim but hesitates because a wolf cub is pawing at the ground. Both wolves are starving, Jacob explains. Helena lowers the rifle and asks, “What will become of the cub?” Jacob says that the cub will starve and die, and tells her again to shoot the wolf. Helena lowers the rifle once more, and the wolf edges closer. Jacob grabs the rifle and shoots the wolf and its cub. “You must always protect your family,” he tells her. The next morning Helena scratches that message on a piece of wood that we later learn is a punishment pit. Jacob has thrown her down there so that she will not make that mistake of choosing anything over the family ever again. What Helena doesn’t know is that her “family” is built upon a monstrous lie, one that her father has spun to rationalize how he treats them.
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Skinamarink does something that I found uncanny. It reminded me of what it was like to wander around the house late at night as a child while my parents were asleep or otherwise preoccupied. There’s the sound of bare feet on carpet, lights being flicked on, the muted rush of water from the toilet. It also captures all the different sources of light that keep the fuzzy darkness at bay, from the blare of ceiling lights, a solitary night light shining in a hallway and shimmering television screens. Within this nocturnal landscape, pajama-clad children play with toys in their rooms, in hallways or wherever the mood strikes. The movie captures all of these moments brilliantly.
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The Evil Dead franchise is known for its wicked sense of humor, so what better way to kick off this latest entry than with a dig at dead teenager films? Unlike its predecessors, Evil Dead Rise isn’t set in a secluded cabin in the woods, but at a cabin by a lake. The sun is shining, the water is glistening and a couple of teenagers are annoying each other. (Ah, hormones.) The standoffish Teresa (Mirabai Pease) defiantly reads her paperback copy of Wuthering Heights while trying to ignore Caleb (Richard Crouchley), her cousin Jessica’s oafish boyfriend. If you’ve seen more than one slasher movie, you know that these characters will soon be dead. That’s true here, but this movie definitely wants to make a statement in that regard.
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Bottom Line: Scanners is an entertaining mashup of Cronenberg’s fascination with freaks and a traditional spy movie, with Michael Ironside and Patrick McGoohan bringing ample menace and mystery to their supporting roles. Ignore the silly genre stuff and stick around for the mental gymnastics.
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Looker is not one of writer-director Michael Crichton’s better efforts (see Westworld, Coma), it is entertaining in spite of its silly contrivances. Continue reading Looker (1981)
The Exorcist is proof that no franchise, no matter how moribund, will always get another chance at box office glory. After proving time and again that they could not make a successful sequel, Warner Brothers let The Exorcist property languish on the shelf. In the years since the equally uninspiring prequels were released in 2005-06, an interesting thing happened. Rival studios used the original movie as a template for their own demonic possession movies. While those movies were not on par with the movie that inspired them, they were usually profitable. (2010’s The Last Exorcism was inconceivably profitable.) This steady stream of success is probably what led Universal to purchase the rights to The Exorcist, with the justification that if knock-offs could make money, a small-budget Exorcist movie rooted in the lore of the original certainly could make a healthy profit.
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Is there anything more pernicious than a hedge fund? I’m not a financial guru, but I wouldn’t be off base if I characterized the way these organizations make money for their investors as being destructive. The news is littered with accounts of a hedge fund buying a company, loading it up with debt while siphoning off profits until the enterprise eventually implodes. If this is the American dream, please wake me up.
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Detroit Cineaste 